Torture

26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, are currently on trial in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping and “extraordinary rendition” of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Omar, who was taken to Egypt to be tortured. On Thursday, Italy’s top counterterrorism official, Bruno Megale, explained in court how they identified the CIA operatives responsible for Omar’s kidnapping: Megale obtained records of all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared. There were 2,000 calls. Then, using a computer program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60 numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. ...

An article by Philippe Sands in Vanity Fair sets out the evidence that the legal framework set out to justify aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay also caused the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that those responsible are guilty of war crimes. Ironically, the actions the Bush has taken to guarantee immunity from prosecution for these actions makes the case stronger for international war crimes prosecution, meaning that if any of these responsible individuals sets foot outside of the U.S., they could be at risk of seeing justice done. (Via The Daily Doubter.) ...

A 37-page October 23, 2001 memo by John Yoo titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States” stated that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to U.S. military operations on U.S. soil in the name of defending against terrorism. The existence of this memo, which has not itself been released, was made public on Tuesday when a March 14, 2003 memo was released, which stated in a footnote that “Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." On Wednesday, the Bush administration indicated that it has disavowed the view of the October 23, 2001 memo. The March 14, 2003 memo, also by Yoo, was obtained by the ACLU as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. That memo asserts that the President has the right to authorize torture in violation of criminal law: If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. … In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.The fact that Bush wasn’t impeached and convicted years ago for high crimes and misdemeanors is astounding to me. (Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list–I’ve not been reading TPM lately.) ...

December 12, 2007 The Honorable John D. Rockefeller IV, Chairman The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Washington, DC 20510 The Honorable Silvestre Reyes, Chairman The United States House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Washington, DC 20515 Dear Chairman Reyes and Chairman Rockefeller: As retired military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces, we write to express our strong support for Section 327 of the Conference Report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, H.R. 2082. Section 327 would require intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual). We believe it is vital to the safety of our men and women in uniform that the United States not sanction the use of interrogation methods it would find unacceptable if inflicted by the enemy against captured Americans. That principle, embedded in the Army Field Manual, has guided generations of American military personnel in combat. The current situation, in which the military operates under one set of interrogation rules that are public and the CIA operates under a separate, secret set of rules, is unwise and impractical. In order to ensure adherence across the government to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions and to maintain the integrity of the humane treatment standards on which our own troops rely, we believe that all U.S. personnel - military and civilian - should be held to a single standard of humane treatment reflected in the Army Field Manual. The Field Manual is the product of decades of practical experience and was updated last year to reflect lessons learned from the current conflict. Interrogation methods authorized by the Field Manual have proven effective in eliciting vital intelligence from dangerous enemy prisoners. Some have argued that the Field Manual rules are too simplistic for civilian interrogators. We reject that argument. Interrogation methods authorized in the Field Manual are sophisticated and flexible. And the principles reflected in the Field Manual are values that no U.S. agency should violate. General David Petraeus underscored this point in an open letter to the troops in May in which he cautioned against the use of interrogation techniques not authorized by the Field Manual: What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect…. Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees. Employing interrogation methods that violate the Field Manual is not only unnecessary, but poses enormous risks. These methods generate information of dubious value, reliance upon which can lead to disastrous consequences. Moreover, revelation of the use of such techniques does immense damage to the reputation and moral authority of the United States essential to our efforts to combat terrorism. This is a defining issue for America. We urge you to support the adoption of Section 327 of the Conference Report and thereby send a clear message - to U.S. personnel and to the world - that the United States will not engage in or condone the abuse of prisoners and will honor its commitments to uphold the Geneva Conventions. Sincerely, General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.) General Paul J. Kern, USA (Ret.) General Charles Krulak, USMC (Ret.) General David M. Maddox, USA (Ret.) General Merrill A. McPeak, USAF (Ret.) Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.) Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.) Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.) Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, USA (Ret.) Vice Admiral Albert H. Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.) Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.) Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster, USA (Ret.) Major General Paul Eaton, USA (Ret.) Major General Eugene Fox, USA (Ret.) Major General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.) Rear Admiral Don Guter, USN (Ret.) Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.) Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.) Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.) Major General Gerald T. Sajer, USA (Ret.) Major General Antonio ‘Tony’ M. Taguba, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.) Brigadier General James P. Cullen, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General Richard O’Meara, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.) Brigadier General Anthony Verrengia, USAF (Ret.) Brigadier General Stephen N. Xenakis, USA (Ret.) The bill in question has passed in the House. It still needs to pass in the Senate. Bush has threatened to veto the measure. UPDATE (December 20, 2007): Notes on a few of the above–Taguba did the investigation of Abu Ghraib. Guter and Hutson were Judge Advocates General (i.e., the top Navy-Marine Corps lawyer). Turner was former Director of Central Intelligence (i.e., head of the CIA).

It turns out that part of the intelligence case for Iraq WMD claims and a concern about al-Qaeda trying to obtain them was the result of false confessions extracted via waterboarding and hypothermia treatment. UPDATE (January 27, 2010): The CIA operative, John Kiriakou, who claimed in the media that Zubaydah produced accurate intelligence information as a result of waterboarding has now retracted the claim in his new book. He gave accurate information before waterboarding, and, as Andrew Sullivan points out in the link above, inaccurate information as a result of waterboarding. ...

The unclassified, for official use only, operations manual for U.S. soldiers stationed at Guantanamo Bay has been leaked to the Internet on the Wikileaks.org website, which is being crushed by traffic at the moment. The manual allegedly contradicts U.S. military claims that the International Committee of the Red Cross has not been denied access to some parts of the facility at Guantanamo. The manual unsurprisingly prohibits soldiers from subjecting prisoners to “abuse, or any form of corporal punishment,” since specific interrogation procedures are no doubt covered in separate classified documents. Still, it’s a good thing to see in writing. A Reuters story at Yahoo has more specifics, and I’m sure we’ll see mirrored copies of the document appearing elsewhere to reduce the load on Wikileaks.org. ...

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars observes that “the US has not only always considered waterboarding to be torture, but has aggressively prosecuted other nation’s for war crimes for using that technique on American POWs,” quoting Judge Evan Wallach: After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: “I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure.” He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. “Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning,” he replied, “just gasping between life and death." ...

…read this description of it from Malcolm Nance, former chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school in San Diego: I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques employed by the Army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What is less frequently reported is that our training was designed to show how an evil totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. Having been subjected to this technique, I can say: It is risky but not entirely dangerous when applied in training for a very short period. However, when performed on an unsuspecting prisoner, waterboarding is a torture technique - without a doubt. There is no way to sugarcoat it. ...

CIA Director (and former head of the NSA) Gen. Michael Hayden is unhappy with CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s work uncovering abuses at the CIA, so he’s ordered his own investigation of the IG, including an examination of the office’s confidential files. That’s sure to put a chill on employee cooperation with or reporting of abuses to the IG’s office.

In today’s New York Times: When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency. ...